The World's Greatest, Gayest Insults

Here's evidence we might just cast shade the most effectively.

BY Christopher Harrity

August 13 2014 8:00 AM ET

LIT BITCHERYMy mother used to tell me, "If you spent half as much time on your homework as you did thinking up all those nasty things to say about your friends, you'd have a scholarship to Harvard." Tell that to Gore Vidal, Mom.

"He is the same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in his own grease."— Henry James

"She was like a sinking ship firing on the rescuers."— Alexander Woollcott

"In her last days she resembled a spoiled pear."— Gore Vidal on Gertrude Stein

"The only genius with an IQ of sixty."— Gore Vidal on Andy Warhol

"Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the."— Mary McCarthy, in a statement about Hellman in a 1979 interview on The Dick Cavett Show; this prompted a defamation suit against McCarthy which was dropped after Hellman's death. Later McCarthy said "If someone had told me, don't say anything about Lillian Hellman because she'll sue you, it wouldn't have stopped me. It might have spurred me on."